France U20

Morocco is not a name France U20 carried into its record book for long, but the 2025 World Cup semi-final changed that.

The side exists to carry players through the gap between youth football and the senior France shirt, a task it took on from 1977, when it played its first match against Spain in Tunisia. Training happens at the Centre National du Football in Clairefontaine-en-Yvelines, and the squad has kept the nickname Les Bleuets to mark the distance between itself and Les Bleus.

Only one FIFA U-20 World Cup sits in the team's history, won in 2013 against Uruguay. A different generation had already shown the pattern years earlier — the 1997 quarter-finalists included Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet and Nicolas Anelka, none of whom needed long to move on to senior tournaments.

Where the World Cup has come once, the Toulon Tournament has come again and again; France has won it more than any other country, with titles stretching from 1977 to as recently as 2025.

Pogba is the name that still anchors the 2013 side in people's minds, not because of what he did afterward for the senior team, but because he led a group of teenagers to a trophy French football had never held at that level before.